League of Legends‘ Fighter Champion Garen in a Nutshell

Here’s a spot on clip made by RHrealism, starring Garen from League of Legends with a couple of other champions and cute minions. The animations mimicking Garen’s personality and abilities are awesome, but the voice acting is what makes this a really funny one: He is… a simple guy. To contact the author of this…

My Five Favorite Kotaku Stories From Last Week

It’s always a pleasure to look back at a week’s worth of Kotaku stories. You get your news, some reviews, some pointed, not-for-kids commentary about Pikachu. All that good stuff. Best five stories? Maybe these… The Sad Story Behind A Dead PC Game That Can’t Come Back | Features editor Kirk Hamilton loves No One…

Joe Biden Gets Too Close To Anime Girls

What is it with this administration? First the President goes on an anime-is-real crusade, and now Vice President Biden is invading the personal space of anime girls. Sheesh! Twitter user @neontaster recently uploaded these images, showing the V.P. getting a little too close: [Photo: neontaster] [Photo: neontaster] [Photo: neontaster] Of course, a couple of images…

Our First Look at the Next Trine

The last new entry to the Trine action-adventure-platformer series was with Goblin Menace in 2012, an expansion for Trine 2, which itself came out in late 2011. So yeah, it’s been a pretty long time, and it looks like Trine 3 is right around the corner… ish. Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power will star…

Why People Get So Worked Up About ‘Canon’

Last week the news emerged that director Neill Blomkamp’s recently confirmed Alien movie will wipe away the series’ less celebrated sequels and will pick up the story of Ellen Ripley from James Cameron’s Aliens. “I want this film to feel like it is literally the genetic sibling of Aliens,” Blomkamp said. This post originally appeared…

What Comic Books Don’t Show You

It’s not always exciting to be a superhero. There’s downtime, when superheroes go back to their daily lives, screw around, play jokes on each other, and pass the day. Finally, we get to see all this recreated in collectible figures and slick photography. Using Hot Toys figures and little toy props, photographer Edy Hardjo recreates…

The World’s Most Advanced Hug Pillow

Technology! It does good things like make our lives better. You know, like making things such as computers, smartphones and talking hug pillows possible. As noted on Japanese site Weekly ASCII, a researcher named Kouchi Uchimura pitched his idea for a talking hug pillow platform called Itasupo on crowd-funding site Makuake (think Kickstarter), with the…

Track: Incense for the Damned | Artist: Electric Wizard | Album: Time To Die Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

The Sentinels Are Cosplay Vigilantes

They are the ‘boots on the ground’. An accessible, friendly team of specialists trained to assess and deploy anti-harassment tactics at conventions throughout Australia. They are the Cosplay Sentinels: they want to make the con experience better and safer for all cosplayers, photographers, attendees. Everyone. Their goal? To empower every single attendee of every convention…

There will never be another Kotaku ‘Shop Contest ever again until next week. Due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, this week’s contest has been postponed. Fahey may be convinced to run a new one tomorrow instead should a good enough idea arise. Until then, here’s a picture of a man hugging an aardvark he found…

The Week In Games: Down With Triple A

With big budget retail games resting for the next week, the next seven days shall be dominated by the indie, the budget and the downloadable. I am not complaining. Having played a ton of the $39.99 Screamride this weekend, I’m looking forward to other players getting their hands on the game and creating their own…

Dead Or Alive Community Leaders Soft Ban Sexy Costumes At Tournaments

Acknowledging that the Dead or Alive fighting franchise has a sexy image problem, community leaders at the series’ go-to forum have added an over-sexualized costume soft-ban to their tournament rules. Reactions from the community-at-large have been overwhelmingly negative. With the biggest competitive tournament push in franchise history accompanying the release of Dead or Alive 5:…